Welding Equipment

Hey Guys. I recently started a little endevour to make a mountaineering ice axe. I have cut the parts for the head out of steel but am now at the point where I need to make a weld to attach the pick to the back half of the head. The weld I'm looking to make is about 2 inches (on two sides) and mates two (more or less) 1/4 inch pieces of steel (not stainless). I would also like to weld another 2 small vertical pieces to the middle of the head that can be inserted into the shaft.

I am wondering if anyone out there has some welding equipment and the know how to show me how to accomplish this. I have never welded before but have always wanted to learn. A 6 pack for your troubles :) I live in Boulder, so somewhere close would be ideal.

C'mon all your crafty folks out there...I'm counting on you!

Thanks so much.

John Maguire
508 320 1767

I always take my welding projects to Craig Brown at Brown's Welding. The guy is a wizard with a torch or arc welder.

If you can’t find anyone else I can do it for you. I live in Junction so it would be a drive but I work as a welder/fabricator and I’m always making my own gear. I would suggest looking for a local welding shop first I’m betting you can get it done for $20-$50 bucks depending on how long it takes.

I posted pictures of the axes I made over here rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/fo…;page=unread#unread

Thanks for the advice. I think my house may be getting a small welder so more than anything else I'd like to be shown the basics here. Ideally I'd like to make quite a few of these. If no one else local replies I would be happy to drive to Junction. Thanks for the responses.

I live in Boulder and would be happy to show you--it will have to be after X-mas , though, if you can wait. just shoot me an e-mail and we can coordinate. mountaindavis at comcast dot net

Davis, thanks a bunch. PM Sent.

John

Nice thread link Rschap--neat do-it-yourself projects there.

Dan Mottinger wrote:Nice thread link Rschap--neat do-it-yourself projects there.

Thank you.

Not knowing which “small” welder you’re talking about I just wanted to say they don’t make a 110v welder that will weld ¼” with full penetration. If you’re just welding the ads on to the pick you might be able to get away with it but if you’re welding the pick to the shaft or the piece that goes into the shaft it probably won’t hold very strong and it’s one of those things you might not know till it fails. Most 110v welders are good up to 1/8” and that’s about it. The other thing I would think about is you don’t really need ¼”; I used 3/16” for the pick and 1/8” for the ads (well it was 4130 chromoly but steel would work just fine), just to give you ideas.

Rschap wrote:Not knowing which “small” welder you’re talking about I just wanted to say they don’t make a 110v welder that will weld ¼” with full penetration. If you’re just welding the ads on to the pick you might be able to get away with it but if you’re welding the pick to the shaft or the piece that goes into the shaft it probably won’t hold very strong and it’s one of those things you might not know till it fails. Most 110v welders are good up to 1/8” and that’s about it. The other thing I would think about is you don’t really need ¼”; I used 3/16” for the pick and 1/8” for the ads (well it was 4130 chromoly but steel would work just fine), just to give you ideas.

Thanks so much for the advice. The pick is probably close to 3/16 with the ads even thinner. This substantial grinding was mainly done to reduce weight while still learning about how strong each of these thickness would be. I have kept the mating surfaces still pretty thick (around 1/4 inch) just to have a good mating surface. That iss interesting that there is a practical limit and that thinner may be safer with a 110v welder.

Thanks a bunch for all the tips and tricks. They are much appreciated.

I would be happy to lay some welds down for a climbing project. I live in denver. 303-332-6080

Brian - Thanks so much for the offer. I think at this point we may be OK on our welding needs. However....

If anyone out there knows of where you can get chromoly steel for reasonable prices I would be very interested in hearing about it. Looking to cut something 5.5" long by 1.5" wide by 3/16" thick. Scraps may work just fine is there is suitable material left.

PM me of give me a call

I sure do appreciate all this help and will post lots of pictures when this little endevour is complete.

Thanks again,

John

508 320 1767

If you are looking for scrap, hit up the college metal/welding shops.

I don't know about Boulder, but I went to Mines in Golden and we had tons of small pieces of scrap lying around of all sizes and metals, and we couldn't care less about giving it away. And at the time I would CNC machine the peice, weld it, and then spit polish it for a 6-pack as long as the beer name didn't ryme with Fud-Light.

If you find a good supplier for 4130 sheet I’d like to know also. The only place I know to get it is Aircraft Spruce but it’s not cheap.

Yea... The problem is going to be trying to find it cheap. The only place I've found is mcmaster carr and their prices are anythingbut...

There's gotta be someone out there who is tapped into a supplier. Maybe just being patient willpay off. Looking into what CU has is a great idea though. I'll be on that as soon as the semester starts.

Whoaaaaa! Do not MIG that especially with a small machine. If you want you can use one of my setups or I will do it for you. If you are going to be climbing on it and trusting your life to it you better make damn sure that there is no porosity and the joint is built right. You can Ox it too but TIG would be a lot nicer. Let me know what alloy it is and I can help out.

Matt.

I’m making another set of ice tools if you’re interested I’m doing a build thread on the other forum. rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/fo…;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;page=unread#unread I’ll probably do the welding in the next couple of days and I’ll post pictures when it’s done.

I would like to help out but fell I have to add my two cents to this whole thing. I love building my own stuff but one of my rules is that if you can buy the engineering cheap why do it yourself. I have a full blown SolidWords seat with COSMOS for FEA as well as MasterCAM x4 so I can write G for any machine. Why cut everything by hand when you can machine it. If not that hydro-form it, you can do it with little tools in your garage. Do not use tools made to an accuracy of an eight of an inch when you can do it to a tenth of a .001. Now I know I am particularly anal but don't half ass it.

All that said I build all my rock crawler parts and am even doing a full ECU by hand for peanuts rather than several grand... BUT any of us can buy BD or any tools for a couple of hundred bucks. I would give up the money (and did) so I can go climbing rather than toil over making tools.

If you are that hard up either plasma or laser the body and cut delrin or nylon for the handles. Stop messing with AL for cost and workability. RivNut one side and be done with it. Plus the conductivity will be nicer to climb with.

At the end of the day / years you could do all the FEA plus R&D of course the cost of your time or buy some tools and go climbing.

With all that said I will help you with your welding. :)

Well since this is a climbing forum I’ll give a climber’s answer, “if you have to ask the question, you’ll never know the answer.” I don’t do it because it’s cheaper.

So.... The first "proto-type" has finally been completed. All in all I'm extremely happy with the results. Total weight for the 70cm axe is 500 grams. This is heavier than I had hoped but not horribly far off the commercial numbers for an axe of that length. I even have some ideas for how to reduce the weight. The target goal is closer to 400 g. My search for chromoly or stainless didn't go so well but I have found a large supply of Al at CU which I managed to liberate some scraps of. I decided to use 3/16 Al for the pick at the bottom of the axe to try to save a little weight. Its held in by just two bolts so it will be easy to replace if it breaks. The main pick and adze is made out of carbon steel that I quenched and tempered in my fireplace :) The shaft itself is made out of carbon fiber composite (both 12k and 3k pre-preg). Carbon is one of the coolest materials I have ever seen and working with it gives you an appreciation for its strength that I didn't have before. I even parked my truck on this axe for a few hours with no cracking :)

I will post pictures as soon as I steal someones camera. I would love to hear some feed back.

While I do appreciate the concern, please don't bother telling me how careful I need to be using home-made gear. I am well aware of this fact. Aside from climbing a tree in my back yard and hanging from the rafters in my garage I plan to beat the shit out of this model before actually trusting it on a mountain. This includes testing it at cold temps and such. I think it has too much sentimental value at the moment but I might even try to snap it on the instron at school.

To matt.I.b, thank you for your offer for help welding. I was fortunate enough to learn some of the basics from Davis on this forum and I think I know enough now to at least keep learning :) I have to disagree with some of your advice though. This has been one of the most fulfilling and enjoyable projects I've had in a while (only more so was re-wiring my motorcycle). In the process I learned how to cut and grind metal, how to weld, how to design for stresses and really utilize CAD software. I learned how to work with carbon and epoxys. I learned how fast I go deaf from grinding and how bad it hurts when sparks fly down your ear canal :). Finally, I even got to spend a lot of time with my roomate who I am now closer with.

As I said, I would love to hear some criticism or some good ideas for revisions. Any thoughts on some failure modes that I should look into testing would be good to hear too. Please try to refrain from just calling me an idiot for doing this though :)

I will post pictures very soon.

Edit: I just wanted to to again say thank you for all the help I was offered on this project. Climbers are usually pretty decent people it turns out.